“Major radio stations are playing less music than ever before, according to playlist data now surfacing. And the reason is simple: fewer, more familiar songs keep more people listening more often, which means higher ratings and more advertising revenue.”

“Conservative Hindu groups have been campaigning against Doniger for more than a decade, contending that she misunderstands and deliberately misrepresents Hindu texts and practices, insults Hindu gods in her readings of myth, and crudely focusses … on sex. To her detractors, what look at first like impressive scholarly credentials … are, in fact, evidence of a sinister colonialist conspiracy dominating the study of Hinduism in the West.”

You get The Philosopher’s Mail, run by Alain de Botton (who else?), which “approaches celebrity news and global affairs as philosophically teachable moments. Paparazzi photographs of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are juxtaposed with quotes from Schopenhauer on the futility of love.”

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: “The second machine age will be characterized by countless instances of machine intelligence and billions of interconnected brains working together to better understand and improve our world. It will make mockery out of all that came before.”

“And that’s a great thing – to actually have something to mourn in this process, that makes me feel really proud that we achieved something great.” But he’s still going to leave us to mourn, while he gives up dance to make films.

Holly Mulcahy: “One of the most important things being overlooked at music schools is practicing, maintaining, and cultivating happiness. Happiness is habitually pushed aside until an individual’s ideal goal or job has been achieved. With many musicians and artists I know, there is often an unspoken ‘law’ that individuals deprive or deny themselves of happiness until they have ‘made it’.”

“Indie authors are outselling the big five. That’s the entire big five. Combined. Indie and small-press books account for half of the ebook sales in the most popular and bestselling genres on Amazon,” writes Howey in his report, which has been described as “the most penetrating, ground-breaking, explosive article about publishing in memory.”

“As their ranks have swelled, interns are beginning to see themselves as part of a special class, albeit one with few privileges and perks. They share their own brand of gallows humor, their own pride of purpose and their own battle-hardened worldview tinged with a risk-taker’s optimism.”

“The decision comes just days after a cache of more than 60 additional works surfaced at the Salzburg residence of Cornelius Gurlitt and the country’s culture minister announced plans for an independent centre to research and restitute Nazi-looted art.”

They often show all of the traits of the “Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).”

“Poetry doesn’t have such a great reputation in the theatre, although I reckon that’s changing. Even 17th-century rhyming couplets can be made to sound wonderfully conversational and witty in great translations.” And, well, Shakespeare.

“The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.”

“In comments that circulated widely in social media, self-exiled Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero on Thursday posted an open letter on her Facebook page criticizing Dudamel, saying he was ignoring ‘the toxic oasis’ in which she says El Sistema now operates.”

“The streaming service Pandora is squaring off against Ascap in a closely watched trial over royalty payments. Big music publishers like Sony/ATV and Universal are calling on the government to overhaul the system, and technology companies are accusing the publishers of trying to skirt federal rules meant to protect them.”

“Digital audio gives us the opportunity to control any sound with a bunch of buttons floating beneath a glass screen, but it also offers the chance to create instruments that take new forms and inspire new types of performances, unbound by strings, sound holes, hammers or acoustics.”

It may well be that Aby Rosen is “legally empowered to take down ‘Le Tricorne,’ and in so doing run the very real risk of destroying it. We’ll find out a few weeks from now. But it shouldn’t have to come to that. Mr. Rosen claims to appreciate art. Well, here’s the acid test of his appreciation.”

“Final regulations are due Friday, but the department hasn’t even started writing them. Transportation spokeswoman Meghan Keck said the agency hasn’t had enough money to do the work needed to write the regulations.”

“How do you discover new music? Some companies have bet on human editors, while others put their weight behind clever algorithms. One company thinks the solution is actually more like a pendulum that swings back and forth between the two.”

“An unnamed American collector paid $70 million [£42 million] for Portrait of George Dyer Talking, a 1966 canvas depicting the artist’s lover perched on a stool, his twisted body positioned under a naked light bulb as though he were being interrogated.”

“Art collectors are paying thousands of dollars for exuberantly garish movie posters that Ghanaian artists painted on flour sacks in the 1980s and 1990s, inspiring artists to start creating more of them.”